The Northwestern Field Hockey Notebook: Ash to Ashes
· Yahoo Sports
12 days out from game one of the regular season means we continue previewing the biggest names to watch on the roster. This week, it’s Ashley Sessa.
This was long overdue; forgive me.
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In a world without Maddie Zimmer, Sessa feels like the only player that could fill the shoes of a two-time Honda Sport Award winner. She feels like “the go-to” on this year’s roster. Everything’s run through Zimmer the past three years. Now, it’s Sessa’s time to step up.
Classified Information
Name: Ashley Sessa
Class: Sr.
Hometown: Schwenksville, Pennsylvania
Career Stats: 155 PTS | 55 G | 45 A | .236 SH%
Accolades: 2x Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year | 2025 NCAA All-Tournament Team | 2024 Paris Olympian | 3x NFHCA All-West First Team
A Unique Impact
In 2025, Sessa was the only Division I player in the country to log 20+ goals and 20+ assists on the season. That’s a testament to the intelligence and savviness she plays with — exactly what made her an Olympian in 2024.
She has a heightened level of understanding of the Northwestern attack that allows Tracey Fuchs to trust her with the ball in her stick in the game’s most crucial moments, and it showed. She assisted on every score in NU’s 3-1 comeback win over No. 10 Iowa, found a critical three points in a high-octane shootout with No. 15 Michigan in the Big Ten Tournament and inserted the game-winning penalty corner in the national championship game against Princeton.
Moments like these prove her worth to the ‘Cats.
Without one of its best players in program history, another Northwestern great will need to step up and do the job for the team to reach the same heights it did last fall.
Queen of the Attack
It’d shock nobody to see Sessa at the top of Northwestern’s goal-scoring category for the third straight season — it’s what she’s done since transferring from North Carolina. But now, it’ll be much more difficult.
One of the reasons that Zimmer’s departure hurts the ‘Cats so much is that her ability to facilitate enabled Sessa to score at will. Without her experience in the midfield, how does she create opportunities for herself?
The version of Sessa we see in 2026 might be more Zimmer-esque than we realize. Someone will need to distribute and find others in transition. There’s no one more equipped to do so than her.
Sessa is so talented at scoring the rock that we often forget how deep this offense is — that is, one that features First Team All-Big Ten talent Olivia Bent-Cole, rising star Piper Borz and international talent Jess Freedman. Maybe sharing the love isn’t such a bad idea for Sessa.
Either way, the ball will find its way to the board.
2026 Projections
Another 20/20 season for Sessa could easily be in the cards. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, but it’ll be much harder to come by. The target on her back has become bigger than ever, and defenses will highlight her name on the scouting report to no end.
Despite all that, the greats always find a way to show up. Sessa is one of those greats.